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Friday, 30 November 2012

Toronto: A Critical Tour, Pt.1

Today, we’re going on a journey. A
mental journey. On this whimsical trip through space and time, we’ll visit and
explore the people and landscapes that shape the physical fabric of Toronto
while understanding their realities through the use of mediated culture. The
dominant real, cyber and imagined tools used to create collective identity is
often only a surface-level or inaccurate interpretation of a community. Asking questions about each medium while
seeking options for grassroots reforming or dissent can transcend these
ideological perceptions to create more appropriate and community-based
depictions.

Our journey will include stops in
five different yet interconnected Toronto communities where we will learn about
their histories, the present-day social tensions and/or bonds, how media has
shaped their role within the city, and what options exist to disrupt and
transform these processes. In such a large and diverse space like Toronto, many
different connections can be made between its urban fabric and mediated
culture. This is but a snippet of the opportunities we have for communal
learning and growth. Buckle in; shit’s going to get crazy.

Parkdale

Our trip begins during a mid-fall Saturday
afternoon on Queen Street West at Landsdowne. Storefront windows showcase tacky
trinkets and borderline-creepy mannequins (or person-equins, to be politically
correct) dressed in 80’s style shawls while old white men lean against the
glass, chain smoking beside a cart full of empty beer bottles. Every once in a
while, an avant-garde style bar or cafe screams itself onto the sidewalk,
wedged in between the priceless fabric shop and the ‘Shawarma Palace’. It’s as
if a hipster shape-shifted into a coffee shop and got lost in a bingo hall. It
is also a sign of change, of things to come and other things being lost along the
way.

The 'Parkdale Sharrows' - another example of slum housing in Parkdale

Despite
the erratic whiff of stale body odour, something to do with this gadabout scene
of old and new feels together;
somehow intertwined with each other in a weirdly harmonious way. You’ve made
your way West on Queen Street halfway to Roncesvalles Ave at Sorauren Ave when
you suddenly stop because something interesting has caught your eye across the
street. From your vantage point outside of Pete’s Diner, you curiously watch as
a bustling group of people, some with walkers and wheelchairs, gather outside a
small enclave with a door on one side. Through the window, a raucous of music
and loud conversations competing to be heard emanates through walls and spills
onto the street. The scene is almost memorizing and pulls you into the warmth
of its interior – this place, of course, is the Parkdale Activity andRecreation Centre (PARC), known to many as simply ‘home’.

Of
course, PARC wouldn’t be here if its users weren’t forced into the area in the
first place. The 60’s were not a great era for Toronto’s West end, and the
people here know that better that most – many of whom survived a decade of
marginalization after the local mega mental health treatment hospital
‘deinstitutionalized’ and forced its residential care patients into group homes
and slum housing projects. What followed was a systematic stereotyping of the
mentally ill living in Parkdale and one of the worst examples of social
segregation to ever happen in Toronto. Cut off from vital resources and support
systems, these psychiatric patient survivors lived in isolation, fear and
immense socio-economic oppression (many, in fact, still do). The way Toronto has unfairly portrayed this group in
media and projected extreme NIMBYism (not in my back yard...ism) continues to
haunt each individuals day-to-day struggle.

Today,
places like PARC are promoting a resurgence of community open space where
members can leave their baggage at the door and find solace in connecting with
other residents while openly talking about their mental and physical
challenges. Parkdale has also been the subject of a recent explosion in urban
studies research. One article, entitled ‘Village Ghetto Land’ (Whitzman &
Slater, 2006), disucsses how ‘in Parkdale, a history of the neighbourhood was
constructed in the 1970’s by using a selective reading of the historic record,
and this narrative has been used to legitimize the gentrification of the
neighbourhood’ (pg.690). PARC has supported this research and is working with
community members to draw an alternative and more accurate story of their
histories. PARC has, in turn, created ‘accidental realness’ (de Zongotita,
2005) on the streets of Parkdale, where the issues of its residents are
‘something that has to be dealt with, something that isn’t an option. We are
most free of mediation, we are most real, when we are at the disposal of
accident and necessity.’ (pg.14).

Liberty Village

There arguably couldn't be a place
in Toronto that is in more juxtaposition to Parkdale than Liberty Village.
Curiously, although such stark contrast exists, the two are located
conveniently close by. You've been transported just Southeast of Parkdale to the
heart of the ‘Entertainment District’ on King Street West. Overpriced furniture
stores occupy the main floor of fifteen story buildings. The Goodlife Fitness
Centre is just ahead. Suddenly, you've acquired a silk pashmina and skinny
jeans. Time to hit the streets of Liberty Village.

Liberty Village is a prime example
of what is known as an ‘artist community’ that has been appropriated and
reshaped to fit the desires of an upper-class development. The same
transformation that took Liberty Village by storm in the 1970’s and 80’s can be
seen in Parkdale now – though it is in a much later stage here. The
hyper-gentrification of Liberty Village turned what was a derelict warehouse
industrial area into Toronto’s most glamorous condo development in less than
fifteen years and to the chorus of countless excluded voices who were pushed
(or forced, to be more accurate) out
of the area. John Catungal and Leslie Deborah (2009), authors of ‘Placing power
in the creative city: governmentalities and subjectivities in Liberty Village,
Toronto’ explain this phenomenon: ‘the production of a place identity requires
both the production of new subjectivities and the exclusion of alternative
actors and understandings of organization within the disctrict’ (pg.2579).
Liberty Village certainly retains a unique identity within Toronto – an
upscale, exclusive and downright facny-ass residential community where only the
most business savvy and fashion-forward dwell. But how did this image become so
big, and what medium was used to cover up the exclusion of other actors?

Much of the forces at play can be
understood by critically examining how the living spaces in Liberty Village –
condominiums, to be precise – are advertised and framed in the media. There is
a certain culture that is attached to condos and reinforced by media messages
in real estate advertising: one of exclusivity, safety, and swank or posh living. Indeed, when you invest in a condo you aren’t just
buying an apartment (presumably, you only buy apartments when you’re buying apartments). Instead, you’ve acquired
a lifestyle. That is what makes condo
living something to aspire to and that is also why housing in Liberty Village
is so goddamn expensive.

1137 King Street West - a retrofitted industrial factory turned office space -
is a prime example of the upscale image sold for for your sole in Liberty Village

To put a name to this proverbial
game, Liberty Village is a picture perfect example of something called targeted advertising. As Peter Steven
(2011) frankly puts it, ‘Media executives are only concerned with those groups
with the most money to spend – so we know the most about young men in their
twenties and well-off urban dwellers’ (pg.78). Ads for new tenants at Liberty
Village specifically target young, single well-to-do city folk by portraying a
lifestyle only affordable by said group. By successfully deconstructing these
medium, we learn how other voices are silenced in the process.

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I am a curious person by nature and have an immense passion for learning and new experiences. Travelling and stepping out of my comfort bubble are huge parts of my life. I try to live creatively with everything I do while supporting the global community as both a leader and a student.